The general knowledge of time on the island depends, curiously enough, on the direction of the wind.

Words, particularly in a play, should have the texture of a crisp, autumn apple.

There is no language like the Irish for soothing and quieting.

I'm a good scholar when it comes to reading but a blotting kind of writer when you give me a pen.

It gave me a moment of exquisite satisfaction to find myself moving away from civilisation in this rude canvas canoe of a model that has served primitive races since men first went to sea.

A man who is not afraid of the sea will soon be drowned, for he will be going out on a day when he shouldn't.

A week of sweeping fogs has passed over and given me a strange sense of exile and desolation. I walk round the island nearly every day, yet I can see nothing anywhere but a mass of wet rock, a strip of surf, and then a tumult of waves.